Ode to Obituary: The Winter Hana
by annyenil
Summary: The second installment of the Ode to Obituary Series. Hitsugaya Toushirou's life before death.Before the shinigamis became souls, some of them had been once alive. What is the connection between life and death?


Disclaimer: I do not own Bleach

**The Ode to Obituary**

By annyenil

**Hitsugaya Toushirou** lived in a place where God was frugal with colours. In North Sapporo, Mirror Lake Mountain, colours were only blue and white of every single hue there could be. The Little White Hut at the edge of the Lake was the only house in the entire district with nothing, nothing else in sight. When one stand at the edge of the Lake, it feels like the tipping cliff of the earth. Because at this end of the spectrum, the world is monochromatic. To most, the vastness of it seemed intimidating, but to the two residents of the Little White Hut, the place has gathered them into a palm so grasping, neither had stepped out of its invisible boundary.

The Mirror Lake was a magnificent sight year-round. It was a frozen lake. Sapporo's forever winter has chosen this place as its best manifestation. Everyday, when Toushirou stepped out of his house wrapped in the embrace of layers of fur and cardigan, he would see his reflection, the reflection of the sky, the snow-capped mountains and evergreen pine trees on the Lake. It was like as though there was another world inside.

The Little White Hut was the Hitsugaya residence, where Toushirou and his elderly grandmother stayed. He had never spoken to anyone else. Life was simple. He never questioned about his parents, or the outside world, because the only two worlds that existed to him was the one he stood on and the one in the Mirror. _This world, that world. _Even the occasion sunlight that sparkles upon the Sapporo ice was a pure, chaste white. Everything was made this way, there was no doubt.

This world was elemental.

Toushirou loved his grandmother. He also loved to skate upon the translucent surface of thick ice set before his house. He wasn't afraid of the cold. In fact, he welcomed it as much as convivial socialists welcomed parties. He wasn't a callow youth. His grandmother knew he was matured and smart, and that there wasn't anything to pollute his mind, straight as an ice-blade, with acumen as sharp and rectitude as pure. But as a grandmother, it was an inborn instinct to say, "No, you are too young for that." to a grandchild. It wasn't protection. It was possession.

They were all each other had to prove each other's existence.

Toushirou was often annoyed by his grandmother. When he wanted to sprawl across the nice, glassy ice, she stopped him; when he wished to dab a snowball with the top of his tongue, she stopped him; while he coveted for a chance to sleep under the stars, she wouldn't let him. "Shiro-chan, where are you going?" Her coarse voice would call out, no matter where he was, when he had just one finger on something remotely entertaining. Toushirou wasn't satisfied. He sought his little ventures.

Toushirou's grandmother took naps every afternoon. It was his _opportunity_. He would grab himself a pair of gloves and head out of the Little White Hut in search of something aberrant in his ice empire. More often than not, pieces of silver fragments or patterns of chiseled ice would amuse him for an afternoon before that voice summoned "Shiro-chan" back to the undulating warmth in the Hut. Toushirou enjoyed the warmth of course, it was a luxury. But what he truly craved for was that cold that slashed upon him without clemency. The disinterested cold made him an equal, there was no privilege for the little. This made him feel very grown-up, as much as his grandmother made him feel like a helpless kid.

The wintry cold was a solace. He told himself that being showered with its glory would train him to become a person worthy of protecting his grandmother. He believed that if he could handle this cold, he could handle the world.

He could hold the world in his paled palms.

Sometimes the ice was thin. And just that once, the ice was too thin. Before a reaction could escape him, Toushirou had created a fracas amidst the stillness of Mirror Lake. A hole had broken in the ice and for the first time, the Mirror was shattered. Toushirou felt nothing but cold in his bones as he plummeted into the deep, dark navy blue. A flash of white light hoisted him out arduously. The arrival of waves of heat soon put him to sleep.

Toushirou had many doubts but no questions. He preferred to work it out in his head.

Grandmother was very sick when he finally awoke. Her lips were very blue, and so were her wrinkly cheeks. Toushirou wanted to hug her, but was afraid that her crumbly bones would simply disintegrate if he did so much as move her an inch. He had no tears, for they were all frozen deep within him. But he was scared. He put a finger gingerly under her nose. Grandmother wasn't just sick.

Grandmother was _dead._

Toushirou was angry._ How could someone take his grandmother away like this? Who could have done this to his grandmother?_ A little voice haunted him for days and days; a devoid look haunted his eyes for weeks and weeks. He had not spoken for months and months. He knew, he knew that when he opened his mouth, the first words he said would be, "I'm sorry, Granny." And that would injure him very much, for he knew, he was the inculpated one seeking absolution. And he knew that the purest ice wouldn't wash this sin off him.

_It was my fault, but I mustn't say it. _

He couldn't accept it.

It was driving him insane, his conscience, his loneliness. Toushirou himself seemed to be undergoing an attrition of bodily material: There was lesser and lesser of him to slide upon the ice. There was lesser and lesser of him to hum his own lullaby. Insomnia was a gradual, tormenting illness.

And then, God accidentally dripped a drop of paint into the world while painting a leisurely portrait. Hitsugaya Toushirou's eyes widened when he found, on one afternoon, a speck of a new colour at the corner of the Little White Hut where he had buried his grandmother. There was this little flower, shaped so much like on of those delightful snowflakes he used to catch and let dissolve in his palm. It has such pretty petals and a delicately thin body. Toushirou adulated this novel colour. He carefully placed it in a little glass and gave it ice everyday.

He didn't know what to call it, for his world yield no other colours than blue and white, and he knew of no other flowers than those of pine and snow. So he merely gazed at it, and let it gaze at him.

He finally talked. He said, "What's your name?" It gazed back at him.

Hitsugaya Toushirou convinced himself that his grandmother had gone to a safe and peaceful place. He said many things after that, but never a word of contrition. The flower told him that grandmother had never given him forgiveness because she had never blamed him. He didn't know why he was so certain, but it was all very much like Hitsugaya Toushirou to be so sure of something.

He took the glass of flower to the Lake one afternoon and let it glide across it. It was dancing! It was joyful? Toushirou smiled to himself, a smile frozen and preserved on his sullen cheeks. Sometimes, ice was thin. Sometimes, ice was _too_ thin. The large Mirror was broken suddenly in one corner, and his flower was sliding towards that abyss. It would be irretrievable. _He_ would be irretrievable. But that never crossed his mind. He could skate and dive very well, but never did learn to swim. There was no grandmother to salvage his falling body, floating in the middle of a blue and white haven.

Hitsugaya Toushirou died on a plain of ice. A glass of flower sat next to him, like a loyal Golden Retriever, waiting, and waiting for him to wake again.

When he met his grandmother in Rukongai, the flower was long forgotten. This was a new world with too many colours, but he had learnt to get used to them. When he first met Matsumoto Rangiku, he thought he was another apopteosis of colours too diverse and brilliant. The colours were too noisy, he couldn't think. If Hinamori Momo were pastel colours, Matsumoto Rangiku was neon, and it irritated him.

It surprised him how much he had to do with that woman, or so it turned out. He followed her advice and left his grandmother and eventually became her taichou. Matsumoto wasn't a great subordinate, but she was indeed a good shinigami. One afternoon, the sun shone through the shades into the 10th Division office where its taichou was buried in paperwork and its fukutaichou was barely somber on the couch. Hitsugaya Toushirou lifted his head and saw the sun lighting up Matsumoto's cascading hair. It was a very familiar shade.

He quickly put his paperwork aside and sourced the database.

_Chrysanthemum_. That was his flower. But chrysanthemum was perennial. How could he have held it in a winter wonderland?

An idea came into his head. His eyes were shut and the sharp edges of his lips melted into a quiet smile. _Rangiku_…...means chrysanthemum……

_Many were surprised at how close Hitsugaya Toushirou was to his fukutaichou. He never told anyone why, but he believed that she was his friend, his warm, blazing friendship in the middle of that grueling Sapporo winter. _

_He didn't know why he was so certain, but it was all very much like Hitsugaya Taichou to be so sure of something._


End file.
